Welcome to the AI Discussions in MME Teaching, Learning, and Research (TLR). The AID-MME weekly seminar's purpose is to give introductory lectures/tutorials on AI methods/tools and exchange ideas, past experiences, best practices, and pitfalls on the use and misuse/abuse of AI in TLR. The seminar is open to all MME faculty, graduate students, and post-docs. Undergrads involved in research may also benefit from attending.
The AID-MME format includes the following options: (1) pilot-lectures on AI (teach basic or more advanced AI topics, as a testing ground for new courses or revamped MME grad or undergrad course); these can span several meetings; (2) lectures sharing experiences and lessons learned from using AI in teaching/learning/research; (3) round-table discussions for white-papers on rules/best-practices for AI use in MME teaching/learning/research.
AID-MME takes place on Thursdays in Kiewit Hall A253 at 3:30 PM, according to the schedule below:
Date | Presenter | Title |
|---|
Sept. 4th, 2025 | Florin Bobaru | What's in the black box? Introduction to Deep Neural Networks. and Curve fitting as surrogate models. |
Sept. 11th, 2025 | Florin Bobaru | Linear and Nonlinear Least Squares minimization for curve fitting |
Sept. 18th, 2025 | Florin Bobaru | Deep Neural Networks (DNN) as a different kind of surropgate models (minimized using Least Squares minimization) |
Sept. 25th, 2025 | Florin Bobaru | Example of a DNN, "trained" using a Newton-based algorithm (lsqnonlin). The need for a different minimization algorithm. |
| Oct. 3rd, 2025 | Florin Bobaru | The Steepest Descent method and its issues; The Stochastic Gradient Descent algorithm. |
| Oct. 10th, 2025 | Florin Bobaru | Computing gradients: the Finite Difference method; the forward mode for Automatic Differentation (AD). |
| Oct. 16th, 2025 | Florin Bobaru | The reverse mode for AD, and training a DNN with "backpropagation". |
| Oct. 23rd, 2025 | Florin Bobaru | Complete code for training of a DNN using backpropagation. Future directions. |
Oct. 30th, 2023 | Piyush Grover | TBA |
| Nov. 6th, 2025 | Piyush Grover | TBA |
Nov. 13th, 2025 | Jae Sung Park | TBA |
Nov. 20th, 2025 | Devahdhanush | TBA |
TBA | | Round-table discussion on AI use for research in MME |
TBA | | Round-table discussion on AI use for teaching/learning in MME |
Please contact the seminar organizer if you'd like to be added to the list of presenters.
Seminar Organizer: Prof. Florin Bobaru (fbobaru2@unl.edu)
